America can well expect to develop a goodly amount of composers for she has a goodly number of people.
I'm a fan of Jerome Kern and Gershwin. That's my kind of music.
I have loved Elliott Carter's music for many years.
I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.
Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz.
I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.
Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.
You don't have to know anything about the Shakers to appreciate Mr. Copland's score for 'Appalachian Spring' any more than you have to know who William Randolph Hearst was to understand 'Citizen Kane.'
Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.
I have to say I owe my career to the master composers of the Great American Songbook who have written such high-quality songs - the best popular music ever composed.
I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.
When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time.
Dietz and Schwartz have sort of fallen by the wayside a little bit, and they are up there with Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. They are the finest of the revue composers - their stuff is so good and so strong.
